The Last
by R.T.D.W
Summary: Correlai Seven, only three solar systems away from the edge of the explored universe. A tranquil world, but be careful - the wind may talk to you. Ten thousand Imperial Guardsmen arrive, five thousand make it to the surface. None survive what awaits.
1. Prologue

Correlai Seven

The soldier stood at the top of the giant stone wall, looking down a thousand feet at the plains below. He watched as traffic flowed along the Main Line that led into the mountains towards the capital, becoming absorbed in the lights twinkling up at him.

As soon as he was aware of this he shook his head and blinked and looked away. Behind him towered guns large enough to reach out across the planet, their barrels nearly five-hundred feet long. The shell weights weren't measured in pounds but in tons.

As a slight wind whistled in from the edge of the plain the soldier thought he could hear voices, whispers in the darkness. As he listened he looked up at the twins moons and stars up above.

The voices got louder, calling out the soldier's name.

Then he heard it, his mother's voice calling out for him to join her. In the backdrop he could hear something else, though, something terrifying.

He could hear the abyss.

Every night for the past twenty nights he had been assaulted by these noises and feelings, and every time his longing for his mother increased.

Tonight was the night that he gave in.

The blackness fell from the sky, washing out the stars and the moons and dissolving the plains. The lights below each winked out and the wall beneath him simply ceased to exist - he stood on nothing, now.

And the noise, oh Emperor, the noise! He clawed at his face with changing hands as a beast loomed before him and the noise, the noise-!

And it was gone. There was nothing. His soul was gone with it.

Behind him another soldier walked up, a sergeant with a pale face and a ragged uniform, his las-rifle hanging loosely from a sling.

"I see you've finally joined me like I said you should," the sergeant whispered into the soldier's ear. "Did you hear it, the abyss beyond, the swirling mass of chaos? Wasn't it _beautiful?_"

The soldier stood there, swaying in the night. His pupils dilated quite suddenly before coming back into focus. "Yes, sir, Sergeant. I have seen. We are wrong. They are wrong. There is no God-Emperor. There is only the one true God."

"You are right, my boy," the sergeant replied back. "Now, come with me. You're just in time to join in the fun."

The soldier followed as the sergeant walked towards one of the many doors that led out of the hangar that housed the guns.

As the door clicked behind them the entire wall shook and the soldier was thrown into the ground as first one and then the other were fired, lighting up the night sky like lightning.

On the other side of the planet a magnificent tower stood in the early morning light, nearly four thousand feet tall and shining brightly. It was this entire section of the Galaxy's only connection to the Empire.

As the sun shined on it it was beautiful.

As it exploded into a million shards of glass and metal it was beautiful.

As it fell down upon the city below it was beautiful.

As everyone died it was still beautiful.

* * *

The lieutenant watched the planet below as he sipped his coffee. Poking out from the smooth plains and rolling seas was the Tower, visible even space. As he lifted his thermos of grosh to his lips to drink he could see as it exploded in a brilliant puff of glass.

His jaw dropped and the warm liquid spilled onto his lap, giving him a faint burning sensation that he couldn't feel.

He jumped up from his seat in the lounge to try to find his superior - and ran face first into a beast of a man nearly seven feet tall.

"Sit down," the man growled in a primal, guttural voice. "Now."

The lieutenant did as he was told and sat back down on the arm of the chair.

"Now, go to sleep," the man said.

"Wait, what? No, I have-"

The lieutenant's sentence was cut off as a small pistol shot cracked through the air.

There was a thud as his body his the floor.

Outside the lounge in the space docks that sprawled above the planet a small frigate tried to escape, speeding past rows and rows of ships. It was going too fast to stop when a derelict freighter was pushed in front of it.

There was no noise. Only death.


	2. Chapter One: Landing

Galactic Imperial Guard Overwatch Station Nine

'The Overwatch stations were monsters that were the size of planets and started as such. Over thousands of years they were settled upon and their resources were used up, giant shafts making their way to the center of the planet.

'Then as the populations and militarical significance of a select few planets slowly grew over another span of thousands of years a decree came out, issued by the Emperor himself. Work began, and ten thousand years after the ten planets had been settled upon they had been turned into giant moving battle stations that were strong enough to wipe out entire solar systems. Their biggest guns stuck up like thorns.

'During the making of the stations over a million people died just from accidents in the construction. This made up about one thousandth of a percent of the total recorded deaths in Imperial controlled space during that decade.

'Over one hundred billion people are thought to die in Imperial controlled space every standard year, which comes down to about three thousand two hundred people every standard second.

'Over the course of an Imperial Citizen's life there is a fifty percent chance that they will fall prey to the powers of chaos, either directly or indirectly. There is a twenty percent chance of being killed by Orks as they make their way through the galaxy and a thirty-five percent chance of being killed by any other alien race. There is a forty percent chance that your average citizen will die due to drug use.

'The average life-span of an Imperial citizen is approximately -'

Lieutenant Coronel Riordan ripped his eyes away from the glowing screen that was slowly listing statistics and looked out his office window. It provided a wonderful view of the side of one of the Station's main guns, the barrel stretching down for miles and up for miles, and stretching off in either direction. A large eight-lane highway wound its way up the side.

As he turned to begin reading again the aging buzzer next to his door went off, filling the stale processed air with a vibration that was felt more than heard.

"Come in," he said to whomever was on the other side.

The battered metal door creaked open and a grizzled old man came in, his face covered in a few days worth of stubble and his century old 'lucky fatigues' groaning as loudly as the door. Riordan could hear the old man's neck pop as he looked up at Riordan. On top of the man's head was an ancient officer's cap that had so many pins and insignias on it that it was just as effective at being noisy as a wind chime when the conditions were right.

"So, what brings you to my cell of an office on a day like today, Brach?" Riordan asked from behind his desk.

"I've got another routine patrol for you, Coronel. Looks like another silent planet. You get to go investigate and all that, you and your boys. You leave in two days, get level three armory access and will be accompanied by a small part of the Thirtieth Armored Corps. It's all in this file, anyways," Brach finished, throwing the file onto Riordan's spotless desk.

"Did you read it? What do you think it is? Just technical difficulties, an anomaly, or...?" Riordan asked while he opened the file and peered inside.

"Yes, I read it, like always. I read it all, you know that," Brach said as he tapped an implant on the side of his scarred head. "And I'm gonna tell you, it'd be best to be careful here, you hear me? Level three access with Armor support? They know something that you don't, I'm thinking."

"All right, I'll go and tell my sub-ordinates to get packing. See you later, right, Brach?"

"Yea, I'll see you again, Riordan. I can feel it in my bone," he grinned, tapping his thigh for emphasis.

Riordan smiled. "Right, then, I'll see you in a year or two. And don't forget to read that report. It's supposed to inspire you or something."

* * *

Drelkon - The Great Plains of Correlai Seven - Two months later

Erin Walker peered through the blinds covering her bedroom window towards the street below. She could see the people being moved along by the Guardsmen, watched by rifle barrels and cold eyes. Outside it was sunny, but inside the room it was pretty much black. Erin's little brother was hiding under his bed across the room.

As she watched Erin could see the sunlight almost dim as a figure made his way slowly down the street, dressed in crimson armor. His helmet very closely resembled a skull and was polished flat all around. He stood almost eight feet tall and when an old woman accidentally fell in his way he simply stepped through her, blood and bone becoming one with the armor. On his back was what looked like a worn, old sword that was lined with thousands of tiny teeth, and at his hip was an ornate black bolter that was as big as Erin's four year old brother's chest.

As she was watching the figure stopped and looked up - directly at her. He didn't say anything or motion anything, but instantly ten guardsmen were moving towards the building's metal door and pounding up concrete steps.

As Erin realized what had just happened she dived for her closet and pulled aside the wooden panel at the back, sliding into the wall recess. She was vaguely aware of a pain in her leg as she pulled the board back over the hole. The footsteps were louder now.

Somewhere further inside the building a door crashed inwards under the weight of a guardsman.

They didn't talk, Erin wasn't sure that they even breathed.

She watched through a slight crack in the wall as three of them stormed into her room, breaking down the door and smashing out the windows as they did. It only took them a couple of seconds to find her brother and drag him from underneath the bed. He didn't cry out or protest, he simply let himself be dragged away like a limp rag.

A week earlier when it had started Erin's parents had been first, dragged out into the street to be brought to Emperor knew where.

Sliding towards the outside wall Erin eventually found a larger hollow space a foot wide and looked back down into the street below through a clean hole punched through the wall by a las-rifle that had killed one of the off-worlders across the street.

She could see the man directly below her now, and she could smell the stink of evil coming from him. She had read about it in books before and had heard of ancient evils, and could only assume that this was one of them.

A tall guardsman stepped up onto a small truck with an amplifying device in his hands and broke the unbearable silence by beginning to preach, "Brothers, sisters, don't despair! It is now that you will all be freed, will be shown the truth! Even now Laiyn is setting in motion a plan that will grant us freedom from the false Emperor's clutches!" He stopped the heresies for a moment so as to regain his breath and then continued even more vigorously, something sickening creeping into his voice. "Don't resist, don't! Join peacefully and fight for the good of all! It will be better this way! And soon, very soon you will be able to see your true Emperor! Yes, he will show himself to you, don't resist! Be one with him! Join him!"

A nearby woman, she looked about forty standard years old, began retching on the ground, her stomach fluids splattering onto the pavement and onto the shoes of the passing crowd. As a pair of guardsmen began to walk towards her the crowd simply walked by, nobody looking, nobody making eye contact.

As she dry heaved one of the guardsmen reached down and pulled her up by her hair, bits of scalp coming off of her head. The second guardsman smashed the butt of his rifle into the woman's ribs and then smashed his bayonet into her gut. Before he pulled it out he fired his las-rifle twice, spreading her guts across the pavement.

Her body fell and more of her hair ripped out, blood trickling down her pained, still face.

Erin looked away and hid her face in her hands, sobbing silently, the past month's events catching up with her. The news about the tower. The news not coming one day. The rumors about cannibalism and insanity. The men in the streets. The lines of people being ferried out of the town, men, women, children. Her parents being dragged off, her mother raped. Watching the people from inside the wall. Her brother being taken away. All the emotions that she had been suppressing over the past two months began to bubble up and overtake her, too much of it all.

Half a minute later the tears suddenly stopped, the internal battle was over. The facade was put up again.

A question entered her mind again, a simple one.

Where were they all going?

* * *

The frigate exited the warp one thousand kilometers from the surface of Correlai Seven, drifting towards it at approximately two hundred kilometers every hour.

It was a battered old thing, _The Eridonious_, about two kilometer long and seven hundred meters wide, tapering to a point at the front. On each side were mounted four main guns that fired meter wide shells as well as twelve batteries consisting of four smaller six-inch guns.

Mounted on the top was a single giant las-cannon nearly forty meters long.

Inside the soldiers were beginning to gear up, each of them grabbing ammunitions for their guns and putting on their equipment, holstering side arms and forming squads. Tankers were cleaning panels again and greasing axles again and loading shells in racks inside their vehicles.

Pilots were visually inspecting their craft again and again while crews fueled them up and loaded guns.

In the bridge people were busy calculating flight paths and trajectories and checking over ship schematics while a young tech-priest argued with an older one over whether or not the welding on the newly repaired part of the ship's superstructure was adequate.

In the middle of the ship, however, away from all the hustle and bustle, sat twenty men in front of a giant and aging screen.

"...And this is the central shaft, a monster that is fifty kilometers wide and untold kilometers deep. It looks like it is defended more heavily than any of the other targets on the plain, but we don't know why. We will be investigating it from orbit while you go about your main objectives. Five battalions will be moving to establish a beach-head on the plains. Another five will be moving to secure the mountain capital nearby and will try to see if they can find out if any of the administration is left alive. Another eight will be moving to take the other capital on the other side of the city to determine whether or not anyone is left in the city after the collapse of the tower and they will then form a second beach-head. The last two battalions will be moving out to take control of the planet's spaceport. We will be in dropping range in about five hours.

"Now, get your men ready so that we can deploy as quickly as possible. We get to test out a new type of drop ship that will allow us to keep the ship out of the atmosphere, courtesy of the Adeptus Mechanicus group back on the station. Each one can carry ten of our normal drop craft, which means that they can carry a total of ten tanks, or twenty light vehicles, or four hundred individual soldiers. In terms of supplies they can carry up to seven hundred tons, and it looks like they will be a permanent addition to our forces from now on. The papers in front of you detail which bays to send your men to and what sort of vehicular support you can count on. Now, get moving!"

The screen went blank and the twenty men stood up, papers in hand.

Riordan squinted at his in the dim light and read the words "Bays seventeen and eighteen, drop ships _Terra _and _Drunkard_. Armored support: Five units of heavy armor, six infantry transports, two large artillery pieces, transported via drop ship _Heathen_."

After everyone else had filed out five men walked in, each of them bearing the markings of Captains. They each walked up and stood in a line, throwing off crisp salutes. Except for Captain Walker, that is. His salute was a lazy middle finger, as always.

"At ease, men," Riordan said, laughing. "Walker, watch out. I might assign you to kitchen duty again!" The six men then burst into laughter at the silliness of the idea.

"Alright, sir," Gerrard said as he read from a dimly lit electro-notebook. "It appears that our vehicle support is in good order, they have a good track record and all that. All the men are nearly ready, fast as always. Shall I get them to start loading up now, sir...?"

"No, no. Have them check all their equipment again, make sure their supplies are in order. Have them make sure that everything works and then debrief them. We start loading up an hour before we leave. Got that? Good. Now, you four leave. I need to talk to Walker in private."

The four men filed out of the room while Walker took out a flask and sipped some alcohol, even though it was strictly forbidden.

"Walker, your men are in order, right?" Riordan asked.

"Yes, sir, they are. Before everyone like always. Now, what do you need?"

"I just need to be sure that I can count on you for this foray. Something doesn't feel right. We're going directly to the plains, and from what I hear it has pretty much no cover. I'm going to need to know that you'll be serious about it all, alright?"

"Yes sir, I will. No need to worry, alright? It'll all be good."

* * *

Four and a half hours later

The last twenty men filed on board, their weapons slung on their backs. After checking the deck once more the crew-man pressed a button and the foot thick door began to slide down, connecting with the base of the frame with a hiss.

As the crew-man check the rest of the doors down the central hallway the pilots began their final systems check, making sure everything was in order. In each of the side hangars the smaller fifteen meter long ships were busy closing their doors and engaging magnetic clamps so that they wouldn't be buffeted around while entering the atmosphere, and inside those the men were busy strapping themselves into their seats.

Towards the front of the ship Riordan was busy checking lists on a screen, making sure that everything was in order. Special weapons that had been available for this foray had been checked out by his men, special munitions for some, heavy weapons for others. All of the men were now on board and their vitals registered as fine.

Riordan pressed a button and the view zoomed out somewhat, showing the entire ship. Each of the bays were visible up and down the entire ship, most of them already loaded. He watched as four craft detached and then left – the two battalions that would be securing the spaceport.

A few more minutes passed while Riordan read over the mission details again and the rest of the men talked amongst themselves. After about ten minutes, however, a guardsman leaned over and said, "Lieutenant Coronel, sir? Something doesn't feel right."

"Yea, I know what you mean, this whole mission just feels-" Riordan started, only to be cut off.

"No, that's not what I mean sir. We should be in orbit, right? But it feels like we're falling, and if I can feel it then we must be going pretty damn fast, sir."

"I don't feel anything, but I can check…" Riordan said, frowning.

He looked at the screen again, checking the altitude guage. They were dropping. And fast. Twenty-nine thousand kilometers. Twenty-eight thousand nine-hundred kilometers.

"Looks like you're right, uh… Private, we are dropping."

* * *

The Bridge of _The Eridonious_

The ensign checked the readings again, a second time, and then a third time. They were still consistent each time, no matter how he looked at it. They were dropping.

"Captain Wroth, sir!" he yelled across the bridge.

The Captain turned around, looking extremely irritated. "What is it, _Ensign_?" he asked, voice full of contempt for the lesser officer.

"Sir, we seem to be dropping at a rapid rate instead of holding at twenty-eight thousand feet like we're supposed to."

The Captain suddenly stopped, thought a moment, and then turned to look at a platform high above all of them where the pilot would normally be. Except he wasn't there.

The Captain's mouth gaped open and closed a few times as he looked upon the bloody figure that was toying with the controls, something very obviously not human. Something warp-spawned.

It had three legs, each of them thickly muscled and covered in a rough red skin. The legs were attached to what could be called a torso, which looked like something that could belong to an insect. It was segmented into six parts, each of them covered in a smooth looking shell, and sticking out of each segment were four arms that ended in spindly fingers. At the top there was a seventh segment have as large as the others that was taken up primarily by a single large eye. There didn't appear to be a mouth.

The pilot's bloody body was hanging nearby from its wires and supports.

The ensign was the first person to do anything, taking out his autopistol and firing ten shots in quick succession at the monster, only one of them missing. The others bounced harmlessly off the carapace.

The Captain was next to move, pulling out an old bolt pistol and firing shot after shot at the eye of the creature. Three shots hit and the eye seemed to implode in upon itself, causing the creature to start writhing and thrashing about.

The ensign lowered his pistol thinking that they had killed the monster, the daemon. And watched just long enough to see the space where the eye had been turn into a gaping mouth lined with teeth.

By now somebody had raised the alarm and the red emergency lights were bathing the whole thing in an eerie glow and making it harder to see, and already some security personel had made their way to the bridge with scatter guns in hand, and already the booming shots were echoing throughout the ship.

Someone, another ensign, had made their way to the abandoned communications system and was now yelling, "Daemon on the bridge, daemon on the bridge, everyone evacuate immediately, everybody evacuate immedia-" the last word echoing throughout the ship after someone silenced him with a shot to the head.

The ensign reloaded his autopistol and was about to fire at the daemon again when he saw somebody run towards another control panel towards the front of the bridge. He wouldn't have noticed the person if it hadn't been for their missing an arm, and he could only watched as the very obviously chaos-possessed person lowered the shields.

Then the first three rounds hit, shaking the entire ship.

The ensign watched as a schematic on a nearby screen showed three of the four main engines destroyed with rapid ventilation of gases throughout the ship. By now the ship was falling very rapidly towards the planet, gravity grasping with invisible hands.

The next three shots hit the midsection of the ship, instantly taking out a quarter of the drop ships and rendering half the ship un-inhabitable.

As more shots were fired behind him and someone screamed as they were devoured the ensign realized that the rest of the drop ships were still magnetized and stuck inside the doomed frigate.

Springing forth he ran towards the panel that was meant to be used to let the drop craft go, dodging the flying corpse of a slain security officer and nearly being killed by a stray pistol round. He rushed up to the panel and grabbed his key-card, sliding it into the proper slot, and then pressed down on a row of buttons.

On the screen a quarter of the ships remained 'locked' because the ship wasn't getting any feedback from them while the rest turned to 'departing'.

The ensign would have stopped to think about how many lives he may have just saved, but he was grasped by the daemon's jaws a moment later, his blood spilling onto the deck below.

* * *

Inside Riordan's drop ship things were the epitome of calm. Nobody was talking now as they felt the strange dropping sensation in their stomachs. The air was full of fear.

Riordan frowned as the screen suddenly showed the bridge as missing from the ship, as well as a good part of the midsection and three of the engines.

A moment later the falling sensation went away, and the pilot gibbered into the com-link about 'anti-air fire'.

Riordan switched the screen to the aft camera – and watched _The Eridonious_ fall away from them towards the surface below, trailing thick oily smoke, flames, and debris even in the sparse upper atmosphere.

Other drop ships were also escaping the clutches of the dying frigate, flying away like birds from a nest, fleeing. A few seconds more and the middle of the ship simply broke, the massive holes in the middle too much for the superstructure. The forward part of the ship kept falling towards the surface while the rear spun off out of control, away from view.

Switching to the front camera Riordan swore aloud as he saw black puffs of smoke and deadly flak filling the sky before them. The planet surface below was rushing forwards, only five hundred kilometers below now, and Riordan watched as the cockpit of a carrier in front of them was gutted by a lucky random shot. The soldiers inside didn't have to wait to hit the surface to die, though, as an even larger round caused the whole thing to explode violently outwards, bits and pieces of metal flying through the air.

The entire craft shuddered as the pilots barely managed to avoid one of the larger rounds, and Riordan watched as the display now read four hundred kilometers. Via the camera he could now see the puffs of smoke on the surface from the larger guns and could make out the basic geographic features – the plains, the river running through it, the forests to the North and East of it, the ocean to the South and West. In the South West corner a city sprawled over the land, enormous towers poking towards the clouds.

This view was lost a moment later as the ship shuddered violently again and a booming noise rent the air. A moment later one of the harried pilots informed him that a shell had blown off the front of the ship – the front two landing craft and eighty men were lost. Nearly ten seconds later the entire ship shook again and the feed to Riordan's screen was cut off, and mere moments after that a horrendous screeching sound filled the air, tearing at the men's ears.

One of the nearby soldiers threw up as they began to spin around and around, and Riordan stuffed the screen into his pack before it flew out of his hands. He closed his eyes because the spinning was more than he could take, and felt nausea rise up and overtake him.

After a vomit free minute, though, the ship began to spin less, and after thirty more seconds they had leveled out – though they were still screaming towards the surface.

Riordan and his men sat in the dim light of the compartment of their landing craft, feeling each minor vibration in the ship that heralded the detonation of another air burst shell near by.

After three minutes of relatively smooth sailing one of the pilots opened a radio feed to Riordan, saying: "El Cee, you boys are gonna want to hang on down there, we're about to go through the last ten kilometers to the ground and the anti-air fire is bound to get harsh."

Those last words left Riordan to wonder how amount of fire that they were coming under could be any worse, but he wasn't too worried since they appeared to be fine compared to just a few minutes ago.

Then they intercepted the final barrage.

The ship shook violently as smaller more rapidly fired rounds started seeking out the weak parts of the hull. Then the larger rounds, though smaller than the ones from the upper atmosphere, began flying by.

Riordan was aware of praying to his god-emperor for mercy just before the ship shook violently again and the front part of his landing craft simply disappeared, leaving only empty space in its place.

And then sweet unconsciousness took its hold over him.

* * *

_(Here's the first chapter, for those of you who were looking forward to it. For anyone who may see holes in my knowledge of the Warhammer universe: Too damn bad. I will kindly listen to what you have to say, but beyond that I probably won't go back to fix things._

_Anyways, I hope you all have a nice day. Long live the God-Emperor._

_Robert out.)_


	3. Chapter Two: Escape and Regroup

The bridge was enormous by any standards, nearly fifteen kilometers long and over one hundred meters wide.

It had ten towers and each of them reached nearly a kilometer into the sky. They spiraled into the air, beautiful works of concrete and steel dotted with weapons made for one man to fifteen man teams.

Between the towers ran a thick steel cable meters wide from which sprouted tons of smaller cables that drifted lazily downwards towards the actual bridge below. On either end of the bridge the cable split apart into two smaller ones that ran for nearly two kilometers to points on the ground where they were grounded for nearly a kilometer more into the ground.

The actual surface of the bridge itself was made of individual section that were the entire width of the bridge and twenty meters long. And there were hundreds and hundreds of them, each of them linked together by even more steel cables and special and nearly indestructible rubber layers.

But despite the enormous amount of traffic that this bridge would normally have it was devoid of any vehicles running its length, and, truth be told it would be nearly impossible for any vehicles to make it on in the first place as each end of the bridge was barricaded off with tons of concrete and sandbag walls, towers, and emplacements.

Crawling over all these defenses were soldiers, soulless, heartless soldiers.

They were people once, it was true. They were once men with families, with homes and pets and jobs. And then came the wind. It swept over the plains and through the streets and alley ways of the cities and through the crevices that only the dead know of.

They wore armor that had belonged to them when they served under the Emperor, and now after their heretical conversion to the service of some unholy god the flak jackets and fatigues served them just as well. They had las-rifles that had been tweaked to be amazingly overpowered and some of the larger ones wielded wielded missile launchers and had bandoleers of the rocket ammunition slung around their bodies. Others worked in teams of two and carried heavy stubbers – one man would carry it on his shoulder and the other man would use this as a platform from which to fire.

And one thing was sure – they were not green; they had experience in combat.

That's why when the orbital guns that littered the plains fired they didn't flinch. When the frigate fell out of the sky and the anti-air guns all across the plane began firing they still didn't move, not even to look and see if they were to be crushed under debris.

But when two of the Imperial Aeronautica Landing Craft streaked down towards the hills only several kilometers away – well within the men's strike range – they burst into action. Hundreds of them, large, small, average, they all moved out with their weapons at the ready. The only ones that didn't move were a skeleton team of barely one hundred men who who stood ready manning heavy weapons emplacements, including a rare set of quad-mounted battle cannons that had been stripped from the now defunct Leman Russ tanks that lay dormant just behind the intricate nest of concrete and sandbags.

As a small plume of smoke rose from the hills and the sun crested the nearby horizon another group of the Lost that had been on their way to the bridge spied the smoke and observed from afar with special equipment.

And when they spied the living among one of the visible wrecks they moved in for the kill – and hopefully the following feast.

* * *

Drip.

Drip.

Riordan slowly woke up as the circuits in his brain began to fire and he began to remember where he had been before now.

Drip.

But where he was now was a mystery. Was he dead?

Drip.

And what in the name of the Emperor was that damned dripping noise?

Riordan opened his eyes, and as he did so the rest of his mind began functioning and he became very acutely aware of the fact that he was hanging upside down in his seat.

Drip.

He looked to his left and saw more men groggily coming to. He looked to his right and saw other men hanging like limp fish. And then he saw it – the source of the incessant dripping noise.

During the descent a large round had hit the side of the drop ship and in doing so had blown the front off of Riordan's landing craft. It was a miracle that the air vehicle hadn't been gutted by the shot.

This hit had taken the pilots with it, of course, but it had also taken out several guardsmen whose bodies were most likely strewn across the plains. One guardsman, however, hadn't been taken completely and was missing his legs. Already most of his blood had spilled out onto the mangled roof of the landing craft, but there was still some left and every few seconds a drop would build up on the unfortunate bastard's forehead and fall into the puddle with a 'drip'.

Riordan didn't ponder this too long, however, and instead pulled his combat knife from its sheath and began cutting away at his harness. Within a minute the last strap had been cut and Riordan fell to the roof of the landing craft with a thud.

He then put his knife away and stood up on shaky legs and looked around. Out of the men that had been in his craft around ten seemed to be either missing or dead. Of the remaining approximate thirty only ten were conscious, and of these ten only four were well enough to attempt to cut themselves free, which they were doing.

After Riordan had helped these four down and told them to do the same to every one else in the craft he opened his side-arm pouch and made sure that his hellpistol was in working order. He determined that it was and put it back in its pouch and then unslung the hellgun that had, by some miracle of the Emperor, managed to stay with Riordan during the crash and hadn't broken any of the connections to the power pack that Riordan wore.

After he had slung the hellgun back over his shoulder Riordan made his way towards the gaping hole that was where the front of the landing craft should have been and stepped out onto the few feet of dirt that was between the hole and the sheer face of rock in front of it.

He turned to his right and went down the gap a few feet and stepped out into a gently sloped open space that was dimly illuminated by the dim early dawn light.

Behind Riordan's overturned landing craft was the rest of the drop ship which was, thankfully, upright. It seemed that Riordan's particular ship had been accidentally ejected upon impact, and now there was a large and empty hole where the ship was for most of the ride down.

The rest of the drop ship was littered with small holes from smaller weapons and the occasional larger holes from the deadlier bigger guns.

Then Riordan saw that the pilot hadn't been lying when he had said that the front part of the ship had been blown off. Where the front two bays should have been there was dirt and rock.

Riordan turned and continued forwards into the bay where his ship should have been. The inside was huge and empty, and at the other end was the door into the drop ship's main hallway which was hanging open at an odd angle as a result of one of the hinges taking a hit during the ride down.

Of course, the resulting space, which was big enough for Riordan to fit through, also happened to be four feet above the ground.

Riordan stopped to think a moment and then launched himself forwards and up the smooth metal below the door and latched his gloved right hand's fingers in a jagged hole that was the result of more anti-air fire. For a second after he lost his momentum Riordan's feet were sliding on the smooth metal until his right foot found purchase on a patch of smaller bullet holes.

He held himself there for a moment and then launched himself up the rest of the way through the door and fell against the door opposite, which was still closed.

Looking to his left, and then his right, Riordan could barely see in the dim light that the hole in the door provided, but he could make out the near by door that led to the bridge. He was also aware of the fact that it was shut tight.

Riordan stood up on shaky legs and tried the handle on the bridge door.

Nothing.

He pulled out his hellpistol and shot it where the lock mechanism should have been.

Something.

The door swung open now and Riordan looked in on another hall that was lined with mesh fencing that separated the hall from the myriad of engine, electronic, and other parts that were essential for the functioning of the drop ship.

Interestingly enough several rounds seemed to have made their way through the drop ship's thick hide and wreaked havoc with the complex inner workings of the drop ship.

Riordan continued down the hall to the end where he found a ladder that climbed up the drop ship's back hull to the bridge, and in one fluid motion he transitioned from walking to hauling himself up the vertical stairs one rung at a time.

He was stopped, though, when the ladder came to to the ceiling and the accompanying hatch that stood between him and the bridge. He pushed tentatively on the hatch and found that it wasn't locked, saving his hellpistol from another needless firing.

As he pulled himself up onto the deck of the bridge Riordan saw why his landing craft had been ejected – there were two pilots sitting at the bank of controls and four other crew members sitting on two benches on either side of the bridge, and it appeared that a smaller round had entered the bridge and taken the head off of one of the crew members and had then proceeded to hit one of the pilots in the back. When the pilot fell forwards his hand had smashed against a panel of switches and the locks holding several of the landing craft in the drop ship had been released.

Only Riordan's lander seemed to have been ejected, though, because the bay doors had been blown off by the same round that had taken the cockpit.

"Aw shit," someone said, startling Riordan and causing him to turn around.

His eyes were greeted by the crew man who was next to the decapitated one. Instead of panicking, though, the man was calmly wiping the blood off of his face and undoing his harness.

"I guess we crashed, did we then?" the navy puke muttered as he stood up and stretched out. "Last I saw the pilot was yellin' something about losin' one of the engines, and I blacked out around when we started spinning. And, well, _hell_, looks like Thurbis went and lost his damned head, the poor sap. Now, who're you?"

"I am Lieutenant Colonel Riordan of the Ninth Overwatch Station's Eighty-First Mixed Battalion," Riordan said, the previously memorized words rolling off of his tongue.

Riordan took a stim-pack from one of his vest pockets and injected the gray liquid into the living pilot's neck. Within seconds the pilot began to groan groggily and move slightly.

"Pilot, wake up," Riordan ordered.

"Well, then, what the fuck is all the noise – oh shit!" the pilot gasped as he remembered where he was. "Did we hit yet? The cargo, is it alright?"

"Yea, Willet, we crashed already. Most of the cargo's alright, too," the conscious crewman said. "Now, listen to the Lieutenant Colonel here."

"What? Oh, crap, sir!" the pilot said as he threw off a shaky salute to Riordan.

"At ease, pilot," Riordan said. No time for that now. Now, where are we, where's our other ship, and can this thing fly?"

"Well, sir, according to the system we are on the plains in between two of the 'gently rolling hills' that they're described as. The rest of your men seem to be downed on the other side of this hill – about fifty kilometers from here. And, no, this can't fly, but I'm pretty sure that most of the landing craft can, if they have pilots."

"Well, then, can you reach the rest of my men with your radio?" Riordan asked as he looked out over the rest of the drop ship through the bridge's glass canopy.

"Yea, I can try. Want me to do that?" the pilot asked even as he began to press several buttons and flip a few switches in preparation of radio use.

"Yea, that would be good," Riordan said.

The top of the drop ship seemed to be as battered as Riordan imagined the bottom would be. The small valley that they were in sloped down maybe thirty meters vertically at the most over the course of a kilometer to an open flat area. On either side of their position the hills, these lumps of dirt could even be called that, sloped upwards at a rate of maybe a single meter for every ten.

Where the hills met the flat plains Riordan could see a small stream that ebbed into the endless amount of grass, and moving through that grass was -

_Oh shit._

Nearly a thousand men, if not more, were making their way up the water and towards Riordan's drop ship. He could see individuals moving between the rocks at the bottom and could make out the larger individuals and their weapons, even at the kilometer distance.

And his guess was that they weren't friendlies.

This thought was confirmed when the slight light of a muzzle flash could be seen at the bottom, and moments later several rounds pinged off the hull of the drop ship, most likely fired from a heavy stubber.

"Alright, pilot, never mind," Riordan said suddenly. "Open the bay doors for all the landing craft and release the locks, and then tell them to prep their ships. Then come with me – I want you men to come with me in case I need you later."

The pilot turned, looked at Riordan, and said, "Sir, there's no way you're gonna get us to just leave our ship here. The Tech Priest on the station told us to guard these ships with our lives, so that's what we're gonna do."

Riordan was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Well, do you at least have any weapons?"

"Yea, boy do we," the pilot said as he slid back a panel and flipped two switches. On the control banks two lights turned on – one green and one red. "Feth. Edmond, you and the El Cee head out up top and force the other panel open so that the second gun can get out of its hole."

"Alright. Come on, Lieutenant Captain, sir," the conscious crewman, Edmond, said to Riordan while opening a hatch in the roof that the ladder continued to.

Riordan followed the lanky Edmond up the ladder and out onto the top of the drop ship. The morning air was cold, but already the sun was beginning to light up the horizon. Daylight wasn't far away. It was quiet, too, except for the occasional pinging as stray rounds fired from way beyond their maximum effective distance were fired struck the hull.

Up here Riordan could see furthur as well, and he followed an enormous looking river past a towering bridge, across some empty plains, and past an urban monstrosity. From there it disappeared between two cliffs that were insanely tall, taller than most of the buildings in the city.

"Hey, man, quit admiring the view and get over here!" Edmond snapped from where he was kneeling next to an unscathed meter by two meter panel while holding onto a metal bar that was flush with the hull and connected to the panel.

Riordan hurried over and grabbed another bar that was next to the one that Edmond was holding.

"Ready? Good. On three. One. Two. Three," gasped Edmond as he pulled on his bar while Riordan did that same.

At first nothing happened, but a moment later the panel slid slowly backwards into the hull, revealing an enormous gun that Riordan had only ever seen on a Land Raider Crusader.

It was a Hurricane Pattern bolter, an enormous gun that was really six heavy bolters put on one mount.

"...And there's one on the other side of the ship?" Riordan asked as he flexed his fingers.

"Yea," Edmond replied as he led Riordan back to the hatch. "And they're one of the reasons that the Tech Priest told us to guard this thing with our lives. Can you imagine if you're fighting those Warp spawned bastards and all of a sudden they pull one of these out on you?"

Riordan followed Edmond back into the bridge where one of the other crewmen was waking up.

"Hey, you can bring 'er up now," Edmond told the pilot.

"Yea, did that already. All the feeds seem to be in order as well as the ammunition supplies, so we're all set to go," the pilot replied. "Now, help Abnett up. I need you two to fire those guns! Oh, and El Cee, sir?"

"Yes?" Riordan said as he prepared to head back down the ladder.

"I did what you asked. The pilots are just awaiting your command now as you're the ranking army out of, well, anywhere now. Normally members of the Imperial Navy aren't supposed to be under the command of Guard members, but we're all gonna make an exception for you. Emperor be with you, sir."

The pilot did a quick salute.

"Same to you," Riordan said as he headed down the ladder.

As Riordan made his way back down the hall lined with the mesh fencing he heard a ripping noise as one of the Hurricanes fired, the six barrels spewing death at the enemy. Riordan headed out the door with the blasted lock and out the damaged door that led to the empty bay. He was surprised to find all of the men from his landing craft huddled in there.

There were two medics who stood out from the crowd as they went around making sure everyone was alright, and one of the more seasoned soldiers in the group was using one of his buddy's shoulders to steady his las-rifle while he fired at the incoming enemies from the cover of the ship. After a quick headcount Riordan figured out that there were seven men either dead or missing from this group.

Riordan looked at the assembled men, thought a moment, and then called in to the pilots with his radio.

"Pilots," he said causing some of the soldiers nearby to look up at him. "I need to know if any of you have space for thirty three men."

The channel was quiet for a moment and then a pilot replied by saying, "I've got twenty-nine dead guys here that I can dump so as to make room. That work for you?"

"Yea, that works," Riordan replied. "Get your craft over by the ejected lander so that you can pick up the twenty nine. Anyone else have space for the other four?"

"I've got six dead guys to dump – take it or leave it," another pilot said. "I'm coming in behind the other guy now, so you'd better hurry the hell up before they start firing with something bigger than what they're using already."

"Alright boys, let's move it!" a nearby sergeant who had been listening in on the conversation. "Get set up by the doors – we've got pick-up coming this way!"

There was a spattering of 'yes, sir!'s in response as the men assembled just inside the cover provided by the bulkhead. Nearby the whines of several of the landing craft could be heard, and after a few moments one of the dark gray and and green ships zoomed to a halt just outside the hole.

Immediately the guardsmen began to move as the lander's back door began to slowly raise open with a low grinding noise.

"Save the weapons, ammunition, and supplies," Riordan yelled above the din. "And the gear! We won't be going far!"

Several of the guardsmen stopped to look at him, but most of them just went about the orders, removing the gear from their dead comrades and taking their weapons. As the pile of de-geared bodies began to grow the second lander passed over head, turned, and landed so that its door was to the door of the first lander, effectively creating a shelter for the working men.

"Sir, the transports are cleared of the dead and the gear is piled up! We're ready to go!" the sergeant yelled even as the rest of the men strapped themselves into the sometimes bloody seats.

"Alright, I'm going to ride in the other one, sergeant!" Riordan yelled over the noise of the engines and the fire of the Hurricane Patterns.

The moment he stepped over into the inside of the second lander the door began to pull upwards behind him, and the eyes of thirty-eight guardsmen were on him as he made his way to the cockpit where he sat down in the empty and bloody co-pilot's seat that was adorned with a fist-sized hole in the armor plating next to it.

"Alright, pilot, you're the lead ship now!" Riordan said as he searched in vain for straps. "Call in to the drop ship pilot and get the location of the nearby crash site!"

"Echo four, this is echo four-six reporting in for the co-ordinates of the nearby drop ship crash site, over," the pilot said into his radio as his lander lifted into the air, giving Riordan an amazing view of the incoming enemy that was hanging around at the bottom of the slope still despite the minimal amount of cover and the incoming bolter fire.

He watched as one figure dashed out from behind cover bearing an enormous missile launcher. Moments before he was able to fire, however, one of the Hurricane patterns fired a volley that shredded the man's body to pieces and detonated the rocket which visibly threw several nearby soldiers to the ground.

Then just before the lander turned to head towards the co-ordinates that had been provided by the drop ship pilot Riordan's eye was drawn to the bridge where the occasional flashes of light could be seen illuminating the lower parts of the towers while a light haze of smoke began to drift upwards – visible despite being kilometers away.

When he couldn't see the drop ship behind them any longer because of having turned Riordan simply switched one of the screens on the control panel to the rear camera and watched as the last of the seven surviving landers escaped just before a shell detonated on the nearby hillside, sending a cascade of dirt and rock down to the right side of the sad and battered look ship.

Mere seconds later several more shells hit, one well forward of the drop ship, one to the left, and one where the first round had hit.

Then Riordan couldn't tell where the rounds were hitting and his view of the drop ship was lost in the rain of dirt and cloud of dust.

But as the lander reached its cruising altitude of thirty meters above the ground Riordan caught a glimpse of a stream of bolter rounds flying from the dust and taking the lives of several of the men at the bottom.

_'No doubt about it,'_ Riordan thought as he smiled dryly. _'Those navy boys are tough-assed bastards.'_

* * *

"Well, shit in a tin fuckin' can, you fuckin' fuckers!" the Sergeant yelled as the pilot relayed the news about the destruction of the frigate. "Now you boys had really better fuckin' listen to me 'cause I'm in charge of you sons of bitches!"

The sergeant and the men with him were in bulky air-tight metal suits that protected them from space, hostile atmosphere, and hostile intentions. Each of the men had shotguns cradled in their armored arms and had bandoliers of shells across their chests.

"Now, we need to get further into this hell-hole of a station because _if we don't_ any of the poor fuckers down on the friggin' _surface_ of the Chaos infested piece of shit are never gonna get any help from the boys back at the station! Now, are you with me?!"

Spittle splattered against the bottom part of the Sergeant's visor as he said this, and immediatly the Guardsmen before him raised fists in anticipation of the coming triumph.

It was a common practice among doomed senior soldiers. Get the younger and fresher ones hyped up so that when everything went to hell and they all died they'd at the very least be filled with vigour and hope.

And what was wrong with that?

And then the special boarding version drop ship came into contact with side of the space station, metal claws grasping the side as three special necks moved forwards and began cutting into the hull.

"Are you _ready_ boys?" the Sergeant yelled moments before they would enter.

"_Yea!_" came the reply.

The whole ship shook as the special charges at the front blew away the cut-out sections of the station's bulk-head, and before the smoke had even cleared the Sergeant was ordering his men into the breach down and along the three man wide sections that connected the gutted drop ship to the station.

He listened as gunshots emenated from inside, and when he went through moments later by wedging his way into one of the lines the Sergeant saw several servitors lying on the ground, twisted and dead.

His men were gathering in an enormous supply area that was devoid of any crates, or anything, really, except for the servitors and the racks that they had been installing by one of the walls.

By now nearly seventy Guardsmen were gathered in the hold while fanning out to cover the three entrances - the two main cargo doors and a small side door.

"Sir, room cleared, sir!" one of the guardsmen said over the radios.

"Roger that. Jackson, you're in charge now until I get back. Stay here and defend this area with everybody else. I want Yves, Liante, and Ragona and your squads with me! We're going deeper in to see what we find! Let's go, ladies!" the Sergeant yelled into his radio as he prepared to open the side door.

Around thirty men assembled behind him with their weapons clutched in cold armored hands, and two of them were working together to use a heavy flamer - one carried the fuel on his back and the other one operated the trigger and the firing mechanism; and everybody gave them a wide berth.

The Sergeant grabbed the lever, pulled it, and shoved the door open, ushering his men through the gap while yelling, "Go go go!"

As the fifteenth Guardsman went through the doorway bursts of shotgun fire could be heard from the other side as well as yelling over the radio such as, "God Emperor have mercy!" "Feth, it's huge!" and "Firefirefire!"

Then the noise of something louder firing could be heard and there were several _whumps_ as what the Sergeant assumed were bolter rounds exploded on the other side of the wall. Just as the last men were going through the door (the flamer team) a round pierced the wall right by the Sergeants head and hit a Guardsman in the shoulder. That guardsman didn't have an arm any more.

The Sergeant headed around the door just in time to get several of his own shots in at the enormous armored figure that was clutching a useless broken bolt pistol at the end of the hallway, his shotgun blasts joining those of twenty-four Guardsmen around him. They finished the steel buffet off with a good topping of flame.

As soon as the flames cleared the Sergeant strode over to the writhing armored figure and stared at the bloodshot eye painted in the middle of an eight-pronged gold star on the wrecked chest armor of the figure.

"Bitch, Sergeant," one of the Guardsmen said over the radio. "It looks like a Black Legion Marine..."

The Sergeant raised his shotgun and blew the head off of the Chaos Marine.

"Not any more he's not."

* * *

_(Wow. This might take longer to write than I'd thought. For this I actually kinda did a rough map of the entire planet with a more detailed one of the plains and then went to my friend and said, "Hey, this is the situation. Imagine you're in it. What would you do? So, funnily enough he commands roughly eight-hundred Imperial Guardsmen with vehicle support to come (He doesn't know that yet). And, man, some of his strategies for assaulting certain positions... I wonder at times if he's a terrorist. _

_But, anyways, to all you guys who read this, hope you have a nice summer._

_-Robert.)_


End file.
